In the first part of our definitive guide, Tim Richardson picks the most fabulous gardens in Britain and on the Continent
Alhambra, Spain
The fabled patios of this Moorish fortress-palace in Granada, constructed between the 9th and 14th centuries, still retain an extraordinary sequestered atmosphere. . . [full details]
Photograph by Marianne Majerus
Bagatelle, France
This Parisian park was created round a small château in the 1770s as the result, it is said, of a bet between Marie-Antoinette and the Comte d'Artois, whom she challenged to create a garden in two months flat. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Bodnant, Wales
It was the 2nd Baron Aberconway who largely created this extraordinarily ambitious terraced garden between 1904 and 1914. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Courances, France
Created in the mid-17th century - reputedly by Jean, father of the great Andre Le Nôtre - this garden is filled with water in many moods, although it is serenity that sets the tone. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Crathes Castle, Scotland
The late Graham Stuart Thomas reckoned that in its heyday under the care of Lady Sybil Burnett, this garden was even better than Gertrude Jekyll's own Munstead Wood, which Thomas had visited in her lifetime. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Scotland
The architectural theorist Charles Jencks created this garden of turfed terraces and imaginative sculptural incident, having been inspired by the experiments in large-scale feng shui gardening (using a bulldozer) of his wife. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrea Jones
Levens Hall, England
There has been much debate about the actual date of the celebrated yew topiary forms at Levens Hall in Cumbria, which so captured the imaginations of Edwardian garden writers. . . [full details]
Photograph by Garden Collection
Hidcote, England
The American Lawrence Johnston may have been plant-mad but he also instinctively understood the importance of design in any garden that aspires to greatness. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Isola Bella, Italy
A garden that looks like a ship is worthy of celebration indeed, and this extraordinary place - situated in the middle of Lake Maggiore and accessible only by boat - does not fail to live up to expectations. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Giverny, France
Claude Monet's dreamy garden in Normandy is extremely well maintained; visitors can gain a sense of the symbiosis of his horticultural and artistic interests. . . [full details]
Little Sparta, Scotland
The poet and sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay created this world-renowned garden in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh over the course of 40 years. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Giardino Giusti, Italy
In On the Making of Gardens (1909) Sir George Sitwell of Renishaw Hall described the "intensely solemn loveliness" of this urban garden in Verona, which takes a hold of most people who visit it. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Het Loo, Netherlands
Very few grand 17th-century European Baroque gardens have made it into this selection but the restored palace of Het Loo near Apeldoorn is an exception. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Ninfa, Italy
After visiting this garden near Rome, many people list Ninfa as their favourite garden of all. It has an atmosphere all its own, perhaps because of the unique way it came into being. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Rousham, England
Treasured as much for the idiosyncratic, defiantly non-commercial way it is run, Rousham, in Oxfordshire, has earned a special place in Britain's garden pantheon. . . [full details]
Photograph by Marianne Majerus
Tarot Garden, Italy
The French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle created this extraordinary sculpture garden in Tuscany from 1978 until her death in 1998. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Sissinghurst, England
The garden as it stands today may bear little resemblance to how it was in Vita Sackville-West's "ramshackle farm-tumble" time but Sissinghurst in Kent is gardened to an extremely exacting standard. . . [full details]
Photograph by Garden Collection
Stourhead, England
For many this is the greatest set-piece triumph of the 18th-century English landscape movement, a garden of temples, grottoes and other mythical moments set around a mystical lake that acts as its beating heart. . . [full details]
Photograph by David Burges
Mount Stewart, Northern Ireland
The hilltop Temple of the Winds by James "Athenian" Stuart that overlooks Strangford Lough is all that survives of a great garden made here in the late 18th century for the 1st Marquess of Londonderry. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Powis Castle, Wales
This is a garden which inspires passionate devotion among a large segment of the garden cognoscenti; it draws people back again and again. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Studley Royal, England
This stupendous landscape garden is set in a steep-sided valley, with smooth lawns, still pools, serene temples and pure-white classical statuary in the valley bottom. . . [full details]
Vaux-le-Vicomte, France
This is the garden that so enraged Louis XIV that he had its owner imprisoned. . . [full details]
Photograph by Alamy
Villandry, France
This garden is a visual, sensual triumph, with the vegetables in the nine squares of the formal potager garden chosen as much for their looks as their culinary value. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Villa Lante, Italy
For the majority of seasoned visitors, this garden just east of Viterbo is simply the most sublime Renaissance garden experience of all. . . [full details]
Photograph by Andrew Lawson
Worlitz, Germany
That Enlightenment progressive and garden-lover Prince Anhalt-Dessau created this 300-acre garden near Dessau in the late 18th century partly as a homage to the English landscape garden. . . [full details]
